State test question and answers posted to social media

Included among the 242 schools where test materials were posted to social media were:

Mayfair High School in the Bellflower Unified School District

Gardena High in the Los Angeles Unified School District

John Muir High School in the Pasadena Unified School District

Cortez Elementary in the Pomona Unified School District

El Roble Unified School District in the Claremont Unified School District

Goddard Middle School in the Glendora Unified School District

Albert F. Monroe Middle School in the Inglewood Unified School District

Jordan, Lakewood and Wilson high schools in the Long Beach Unified School District

Diamond Bar High in the Walnut Valley Unified School District

Bloomington, Colton and Grand Terrace high schools in the Colton Unified School District

Jerry D. Holland Middle School in the Baldwin Park Unified School District

Monterey High within the Burbank Unified School District.

State education officials remained confident Friday that the leaking of questions from a statewide test to social media did not result in massive cheating on the exam taken last spring.

Students at 16 state public schools leaked questions and answers from the California’s Standardized Testing and Reporting assessments, an exam measuring academic proficiency, on social media networks during the most recent test period from March 1 to June 30, state education officials said Friday.

An additional 226 schools were named as campuses where test materials other than questions and answers, such as test booklet covers, were posted on social media.

California Department of Education officials said social media networks such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter were contacted shortly after each leak.

Advertisement

“During the testing period, we worked closely with social media to get the posts taken down as soon as possible,” said Paul Heffner, communication director with the state Department of Education.

The postings were often removed within 24 to 48 hours.

STAR test results were released earlier this week.

The state Department of Education placed a cautionary flag on the publicly posted test results for all schools where there was a compromise.

An investigation, which is ongoing, into the social media postings was launched after state officials learned of the images last spring, Heffner said.

State officials don’t know how many students saw the images, but are confident that the posting of actual questions and answers didn’t compromise test results.

“We had a testing contractor do a number of statistical analyses to determine whether there was any cheating, and there was not,” said state Deputy Superintendent Deb Sigman, who oversees assessments and accountability issues for CDE.

The consultant didn’t canvass all of the test-takers; with more than 4 million students taking the test that would have been impossible.

What the testing consultant did was look at the questions posted and determine how many students would normally answer those questions correctly. From the consultant’s analysis, it didn’t appear that the questions posted on social media were answered correctly more often than expected, Heffner said.

San Pedro Senior High School Principal Jeanette Stevens declined to comment on why the school, part of the Los Angeles Unified School District, was identified among 225 others “with images on social media,” but not those including test items.

However, she said the school has worked hard to get the message across that standardized testing rules aren’t to be taken lightly.

“We do take testing extremely seriously, and there are regulations and policies and procedures that we do implement routinely,” Stevens said. “Our staff is well-informed and our students are well-informed.”

Gardena High made the list after a student snapped a picture of the front page of his answer sheet and posted it to Instagram with a message saying that the student had finished early and was bored, said Principal Russ Thompson.

“I spoke with him, and I spoke with his parents ... he was just fooling around,” Thompson said.

The school emphasizes that students need to take cellphones out of their pockets and show they’re turned off during tests.

“We took the incident very seriously, and I believe we took effective action from preventing it from happening again,” Thompson said.

At Monterey High within the Burbank Unified School District, a student this spring uploaded an image of a “doodle” made on a test item, said Sharon Cuseo, the district’s director of instruction and accountability.

The student was informed that the incident violated protocols. But it has also prompted Burbank to add new ones, including instructing students to turn their phones off and requiring that they sign a document saying they won’t copy images, Cuseo said.

Long Beach Unified posts signs in front of each testing room that read: “unauthorized electronic devices may not be used at any time during the testing session.”

The district collects cellphones and backpacks before allowing students to enter the testing rooms.

“As in prior years, any staff members who come near any tests are required to sign a security affidavit here in Long Beach. We take test security seriously,” said Chris Eftychiou, Long Beach Unified School District spokesman.

Still three Long Beach high schools, Wilson, Lakeview and Jordan, made the list of campuses where students posted test images to social media networks.

As was the case at Gardena High School, a student at John Muir High School in Pasadena snapped a picture of a test booklet and posted it to Instagram, Pasadena Unified School District spokesman Adam Wolfson said.

“Before and after this incident we did training for staff,” Wolfson said. “We let students know. The teacher in this room told them to take out their electronic devices,” following protocol.

Muir High School procedures require students to turn off their mobile devices and store them in a backpack that is stowed away from where students are writing the test or students can give the device to test proctors to keep in a sealed envelope until testing ends.

“We’re not going to start frisking students before they take the STAR test,” said Wolfson.

He said the student and his parents were spoken to after the incident.

Districts across the Southland said they planned to step up efforts to prevent tests from being leaked to the Web.

“We are aware of the breaches and will be working with our principals and teachers to ensure that it does not happen again,” Colton Joint Unified spokeswoman Katie Orloff said. “While none of the breaches compromised student test results, we take this very seriously.”

San Bernardino City Unified acknowledged that it took disciplinary action against its students who participated in the postings.

“There was a testing irregularity at Indian Springs High School last spring,” San Bernardino City Unified spokeswoman Linda Bardere said Friday. “The school took appropriate disciplinary action with the student, and because it was an isolated incident, there were no repercussions for the school site.”

In 2012, illegible test images popped up on social media. As was the case with the most recent images of test materials posted to social media, state education officials were confident that test results were not compromised.

However, the state began to step up its monitoring of social media during state testing.

In its instructions to schools, the state encourages schools to prohibit cellphones from schools. But the decision of whether to confiscate phones is left up to the individual districts. Sigman said.

“We take the validity and reliability of our assessments very seriously, and our schools do, too, which is why we redoubled our efforts to monitor these postings and alerted school districts when they occurred,” Sigman said. “These postings look to be attempts by students to gain attention among their friends, not an effort to gain an advantage on a test.”